Couldn't think of a hook.
Would you still read it?
Before I believed in the blinding of pain
My hours were solid but crumbling, already
And in the weeks of a passive life thereafter
There were nothing but wooden tears falling down my hollow face.
Those days I had a feeling
Once risen like a phoenix I would
Dazzle you all with a talent unmatched
Wring out my misfortune
Into consumable art
Get applauded and loved
Revered for the serious take on it. Life.
The lack of time
The unfair highs and troughs winding on.
After all these days
Pain resurfaces only as dull.
Mere sickness
Lacklustre in character,
No storybuilding.
Nothing that could absolve
Anything that I will ever think or do.
Breathing my voice back
However
In an imminent curfew drill
Marred by a sinking sense of doom
I wonder
What do I make of it?
There is a red door standing
I hear the water rustling inside,
Beyond the door is a home and the women are up
Already
They're getting ready for a cold shower
The sun cracks the sky open
The red door is glowing like fire unkempt.
It always feels like there's no life
Beyond or before.
It only occurred to me
Yesterday
When the cold sun licked my room
Left a warm shade of glow
For long enough
That I felt I can go back anytime.
Anywhere.
My mother, sitting on the bed,
Peeling clothes off little peanuts
Our small old TV playing rabindra sangeet
My eyes shut, faking minutes of more sleep
Hoping
With all my little might
My tuition didi doesn't show up.
In that universe
My grandma is still writing recipes in her notebook
Waiting for our exams to get over
For us to crowd her apartment,
I am not a fallen soldier
And I don't falter in my speech when I ask for something.
Something that always translates to
Do you love me
Do you know I do
Always
Keeping memories heavier than blood can carry
Because there's always a lot of life
Before, and beyond.
After my thoughts escaped the room
Through the windows
I was left with a remembrance of the ache.
A burden that is so familiar it never goes away,
In my dream I worry, will it come back?
My vigorous speaking doesn't help,
I imagine my friends growing into important figures
They become important figures
And my myopic glance is throttled further.
Doesn't growing up guarantee a thing?
The ink is again toned by war
Seismic inches crippling on each side of the border
But that's hardly news anymore
It's what we expect because we know
History, political science, current affairs.
I form an opinion only if there is an interview,
Else I let it fester
While I watch a sitcom in my bed alone.
Sometimes I have three eyes
An extra pair of ears
A skin as thin as rice paper in water.
This is not to say I don't have days where
If you tried you'd scrape half an eyeball
A thick roll of skin
Perhaps a heart shaped wound,
Sealed with scar tissue
A void with no doors.
Today I am marshmallow-burnt
I remember you and I almost forgot
How far you have drifted away.
It's incredible, really,
How the ants pay respect to their dead,
How I wore my shirt inside out that day,
How you appear in my dreams,
Still.
My keyboard is ready but I keep my heart safe
I cannot write to you
My days with you remind me of my childish bubble.
Doesn't it kill?
To remember an old friend when the time has shifted
The clock hands fractured into a future
I couldn't foresee.
In the laughter of my grief, I remember you
Even as I write it,
It's hilarious
Your birthday's next month
And we evaporated you. Returned to the Mother.
I stood there and watched it all,
And I can attest to it
None of it was real.
In the grief of my love, I laugh.
Maybe you come in peace
And leave
My winters are now old and I remember you
Like a baby laughing at her mother.
It's too soon to forget,
Too tender to remember,
How bitter and angry I become very often
Scares me to my core.
Many things will happen
To me
To my friends, family, people I don't know yet
How will I tell you, knowing that you wouldn't listen?
I will tell you
I am telling you
Maybe you go in peace,
Maybe I'll make peace with my staying.
It did not happen because I worried too much about it.
It happened because I did;
Somehow it also happened
When I was wrapped in the blanket sea of thoughts
Completely unrelated to the pressing needs of the hour.
My friend said it happened
Because he thought about the tic tac toe of it all
Another said she made a polygon
Out of her worries
And a diamond carved itself out.
For me it did not happen tonight, or maybe this year,
Because it won't
Simply because.
It was beautiful tonight,
My friends weren't here and that's something
I can forgive myself for.
What else? I speak another tongue now
Again
Like before,
Sometimes the only thing that is unearthed
Is a fistful of smoke
Passed around through hollow faces
The only thing shared
Like a compromise.
I don't know how old I am
How serious or juvenile
The moon looks the same to me,
Maybe glossier on some days than the rest.
I love that I don't have to explain myself
To you
Or to the ones I wrote to
When I was young and stupid and bored
I love that I get little time to pour over my lack
Sprinting and scurrying about
Like the overchild that I am.
Trust me,
I do laugh and wail and wet my sorrows
To gulp them down
Or look blankly,
Like an old woman who doesn't get the joke
And doesn't care
When they make fun of things that aren't funny.
I berate myself, I am not radical enough
My days are spent hiding my soft teeth
You can't wring me out of my burrow
Not today,
Perhaps never.
I will light a cigarette tonight,
Smoke it alone, and unusually;
It is going to be a long night
Hiding and hibernating
My breaths will be my only friends
For now.
mimimusing 